Documentaries

Inanga : A Song of Survival in a Daughter's Rwanda

Synopsis

The recordings featured on both the Inanga film and accompanying audio disc were made over the course of two summers (2009 and 2010) in an attempt to document the role of the inanga musical instrument before and after the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The producer, Dr. Gregory Barz, made his way through the Rwandan countryside for several months at a time from the northern volcano region, to the western Congolese border areas, the Nyanza mountainous regions, to the Southern district surrounding Butare and the lush central areas surrounding the capital city of Kigali. Recording traditional musicians, dancers, and singers along the way convinced him that a resurgence of musical activity, especially drawing on local, traditional sensibilities, was in fact re-stabilizing a post-genocide culture in addition to contributing to governmental mandates related to unity and reconciliation.

Producer Bio

Gregory Barz is associate professor of ethnomusicology and anthropology at Vanderbilt University and holds the ongoing position of Senior Research Professor at the University of Bloemfontein in South Africa. He teaches courses in African music, American popular musics, World Music, Medical Ethnomusicology, and music and global health. He is co-editor of two editions of Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (Oxford), Mashindano! Competitive Music Performance in East Africa (Mkuki na Nyota), and The Culture of AIDS in Africa: Hope and Healing in Music and the Arts (Oxford). He is author of Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda (Routledge), Music in East Africa: The Performance of Tradition and Modernity (Oxford), and Performing Religion: Negotiating Past and Present in Kwaya Music of Tanzania (Rodopi). He conducts ongoing collaborative field research in Rwanda and South Africa, most recently as a Senior Research Fellow in the AIDS Research Program of the Fulbright Fellowship Program.